Win or lose, Saturday’s game vs Texas is a positive for Ohio State (but I’d much prefer win)

NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...

Let’s get this out of the way at the very top. If Ohio State loses to Texas on Saturday, I will spend the rest of the weekend skulking around my house, nitpicking every single decision Ryan Day and his staff made. If the Buckeyes look unprepared, blow assignments, make inexplicable coaching decisions, or simply fail to execute when the moment demands it, I will be every bit as annoyed as you would expect an Ohio State fan to be.

But there is also a larger truth about Saturday’s game that exists beyond the final score: Ohio State will be a better football team on Sunday for having faced the Longhorns, whether they win or lose.

Obviously, losing would have consequences. Ohio State is heading into Week 2 of an extraordinarily difficult schedule this season, and taking a loss this early would dramatically reduce the Buckeyes’ margin for error. With games against USC, Indiana, and Oregon — just to name a few — still to come, a loss would obviously make it even more difficult for Ohio State to make the College Football Playoff field. While it clearly wouldn’t eliminate them from contention in the 12-team playoff era, it would impact seeding and would greatly reduce how much flexibility OSU has if something else goes wrong against another elite opponent later in the year.

So, yes, winning matters quite a bit, but the purpose of the regular season cannot simply be to arrive at December with the prettiest possible record; we’ve seen how that goes. For a program like Ohio State, the ultimate goal is to be prepared to win multiple games against elite teams in the College Football Playoff, and, in my mind, the best way to prepare for that is to actually play elite teams.

The last two times that Ohio State has won the national title in the CFP era, they suffered losses in the first half of the season. So, while again, I am not saying it would behoove the Buckeyes to lose, I do believe that facing teams legitimately capable of beating you — and being forced to respond to that type of pressure — is a necessary part of a team’s path to winning it all in today’s college football.

Ohio State spent much of the 2025 regular season operating with a decided talent advantage and seemingly coasting through a below-average slate of opponents. Then, when the Buckeyes finally found themselves in a true heavyweight fight against Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game, they showed that they did not respond very well to being punched in the face.

That was true of the players, who at times seemed unable to absorb any kind of significant blow and immediately get up off the canvas, but perhaps more concerningly, it also felt true of the coaching staff. When Ohio State could no longer rely on having better players at nearly every position, there were moments when the coaches struggled to find the right counterpunch, mainly because they hadn’t had to all season.

That is precisely why a game like Saturday’s is so important to the long-term prospects of this Buckeye team. There are things that will happen against Texas that simply cannot be recreated against a Ball State, Nebraska, or even Illinois.

Ohio State’s offensive line will have to communicate under pressure; Jeremiah Smith and Devin McQuin will have to separate against future NFL defensive backs; Julian Sayin will have to make decisions while the pocket is collapsing; and defenders will have to stand firm against an offense capable of scoring from anywhere on the field.

But perhaps what is most important is that both the players and coaches will have to operate under far more stressful circumstances than they did at any point in last year’s regular season, save against these very Longhorns in Week 1. And, while we think of football as being the ultimate physical test, how you respond in high-pressure situations matters.

Coaches spend an enormous amount of time trying to simulate pressure in practice — just last night, Day said they have been practicing with crowd noise for weeks — but there is no drill that can accurately recreate a fourth-quarter third down against Texas with 100,000 people screaming and a national audience watching. There is no scout-team period that can replicate the feeling of giving up a touchdown, watching the momentum shift, and knowing you have to respond immediately.

Those experiences, those reps are important to get in September because Ohio State hopes to be able to learn from them in December and January. That is also why Ohio State and Texas deserve considerable credit for scheduling the game in the first place and keeping it on the books when a lot of other top contenders are canceling their marquee matchups.

At a time when many major programs have looked for ways to reduce risk, protect postseason résumés, or move away from highly ranked nonconference matchups, these two programs willingly signed up for a game that is guaranteed to put the loser behind the 8-ball when it comes to playoff positioning. And while there are legitimate reasons for programs to cancel these types of games, college football is better when teams like Ohio State and Texas play each other.

More importantly for the Buckeyes, Ohio State should be better because it played Texas. A victory would give the team proof that it can go toe-to-toe with another legitimate national championship contender despite having replaced a couple truckloads of NFL talent. It would give the players confidence; it would give the coaches meaningful data points for later in the season; and it would give Ohio State an important notch on its résumé before the calendar even reaches October.

A loss would be far less enjoyable and would ruin my weekend (and maybe my whole week, depending on how it plays out), but it would provide plenty of useful information as well. Maybe it exposes a protection issue; maybe it reveals a weakness in the secondary; maybe it shows that a particular player needs more time against quality competition; maybe it forces the coaching staff to confront something in September that otherwise would not become obvious until the playoff.

Those aren’t moral victories, and they should not be celebrated as such, but they are lessons that couldn’t be learned by only playing the likes of Grambling State and the bottom quarter of the Big Ten. After what we witnessed last season, I would rather this team learn those lessons now than discover them for the first time when there are no more opportunities on the schedule to fix them.

So yes, Saturday is important. Every Buckeye fan will want to win it, and I will absolutely be salty if they don’t. But regardless of the final score, Ohio State will leave Austin having experienced something it could never manufacture in practice or against an overmatched opponent: a postseason-level football game. I’d just prefer they learn those lessons in a win rather than a loss.

More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos